


Calling Cards

by ScarletteStar1



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Angst, Erotic, Erotica, F/M, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, NSFW, Older Man/Younger Woman, Rough Sex, Shameless Smut, Victorian Attitudes, demonic stuff, malnessa, very little plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-09-06 07:44:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16828213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/pseuds/ScarletteStar1
Summary: ...Claim and devour her, he would, and when he’d finished he would pick his teeth with her delicate, snow white bones. “Oh, what wicked work you women weave,” he whispered aloud. His breath singed her flesh. ...





	1. Chapter 1

She slunk down the stairs. 

The house sat quietly in a late afternoon of radiant pools and deep shadows over carpets and fixtures. Her step was as light as her hand on the bannister. 

She’d heard it called the Golden Hour, which sounded nice enough, or even lovely. A time of inspiration for poets and artists, it had always been her least favorite time of day. Something about rapidly fading winter light made her feel as though she were passing over a bridge from life to oblivion, and even though she was comforted by darkness and night, the journey of that hour in between was arduous. 

She’d not bothered to dress, and although she’d thrown a robe over her black, satin nightgown, it fell open and slipped down to expose one of her shoulders. She didn’t bother to fix it, but she did shiver at the draft of winter air in the foyer. It seemed there was no door thick enough to keep out the frozen gusts beyond their walls. 

At the drawing room, Vanessa took a quick left, and approached the decanter of brandy. The fire had been well stoked, and it greeted her, a warm embrace against which she sighed. As she poured herself a generous glass of spirits, she noticed a crystal tray had been surreptitiously placed nearby on the table with the liquor. It was filled with a tidy stack of cards. Vanessa lifted the glass to her lips with one hand as she sifted through the cards with the other. 

“You had quite a lot of visitors,” Sir Malcolm intoned. She’d not heard his voice in three days since he’d given up trying to speak to her through the barrier of her locked door. 

“Go away, go away!” She had screamed at him until she was hoarse and until he finally acquiesced and left her to her silence and sobbing. She remembered all this with a frown. 

Now, his words filled her ears as the brandy filled her throat, each warming a different part of her body and making her realize suddenly how cold she’d truly been these days past. Vanessa turned. He sat at his desk, reading. He’d not looked up at her, nor did he now. “You can see they left you their calling cards. Mr. Grey came several times and left a card each time lest you not notice he’d been here. And of course Mr. Chandler was here daily as well, sometimes several times a day, although he does not possess the formality of calling cards, so you will not find one from him.” He marked his page and closed his book. “And Doctor Frankenstein? Really, Vanessa.” To anyone else, his tone would have merely sounded bland, but Vanessa heard the undercurrents of irritation and scolding. 

“How dare you chastise me?” She said. At long last, he looked up at Vanessa. His face was unreadable as the closed book under his hand. 

“Consider your calling cards, my dear Miss Ives while you consider the irony of the pot and kettle.”

“I’m surprised you were even here to greet them,” Vanessa snarled and turned back to the brandy. She filled her glass again and walked to stand before the fire. Every particle of her craved heat. 

Sir Malcolm stood, “Ah. I see. So, your apparition does not mean you are quite done with your sulk after all?”

“I don’t know, Malcolm, are you quite done fucking that shameless witch?” Vanessa hissed back at him. She’d spun to face him and in doing so, some of her drink sloshed over the edge of her crystal tumbler and onto her hand. She brought her hand to her mouth and licked at the amber beads of moisture. Malcolm growled as her tongue touched her own flesh. 

“As usual you are being unfair,” he muttered.

“And as usual you’re being blind and cruel!” She turned back to stare into the flames so he would not see the tears that spilled down her cheeks. 

“Vanessa,” he said softly and moved from behind the barricade of his desk, where he typically felt some semblance of safety. He approached her with steps light and slow, as he might have approached an animal he was stalking in the jungle or on the savannah. Inwardly, he willed his own heart to slow itself so she would not sense the fear and trepidation that flowed through him and would certainly spook a wild creature. He considered the pale woman before him, her shoulder so sharp it could cut his flesh should he chose to embrace her. Nevertheless, he continued in his approach. “You’ve had your dalliances too, my dear. The pile of calling cards in the tray speak for that.” He lifted the silk robe up around her shoulder and trailed his finger down the front of her chest. At the warmth of her flesh, he shivered. 

“Are you calling me a whore?”

“What? Good heavens, no!” His hand slipped down her arm and cupped her elbow. He felt her muscles tense, but he did not back away. Like a fierce creature of the night, she could spring on him at any moment, but it was a risk he would take. He wouldn’t ask forgiveness, nor would he offer any. It was not in their nature, not truly. They were past all of that and had been for many years. He ran his thumb in circles around the bony part of her elbow over the silk of her dressing gown. She looked up at him with fierce, wet eyes, deep set in her angry, wet cheeks, but she did not move away. Her hair hung in limp, raven coils around her shoulders. “You could use a bath and a proper meal. You’ll make yourself sick taking so much drink on an empty stomach.” He knew she’d not touched much on the trays that had been left outside her door for the past few days. Indeed, she looked pale, even more so than usual. He could practically see the iridescent spider web of veins throbbing over her chest, feeding her heart the rage she needed to reside with him. 

“Bathe and feed me would you? You’re not my father. I’ll drink if I please,” she snapped and tossed back the last of the brandy. She made to go back to get more, but he caught her wrist and pulled her back to him, pulled her in against his chest. Quite suddenly he was urgent to have her close to him. He took and set her glass on the mantle and attempted to hold her, but she balled her fists against his chest and resisted. 

“I may not be your father,” he whispered into her hair. “But you selfish, spoiled child, you know I care and cannot stand to see you harm yourself.” His hands moved over her like she was a doll, made her head fall back so he could press his lips on her neck and chest, made her arms go limp so he could clutch her waist and palm her breasts. He moaned as he dragged his mouth over her face and felt her arms around his back at last. Her unwashed flesh was sour and salty, but it was hers and it fed him, nourished parts of him that had formerly starved and failed to thrive. 

Vanessa bit his earlobe and whispered, “She is old. Her magic is frail and dusty and cannot protect her for much longer. My magic is younger, stronger. I will kill her, do you hear me?”

“Yes. Yes. Very well,” he murmured absently. Aching as he was against his own thigh, it was challenging to focus on her words. He pressed himself against her. He craved the taste of her nipple between his lips. He pushed down the robe he’d just brought up around her so he could bite into the taut skin of her shoulder. He’d leave a mark on her, but he hardly cared. She could wear one of her high necked dresses for a week while it healed. His lips worked in suction around his teeth on her skin. He wrapped his fist in her hair and pulled. Claim and devour her, he would, and when he’d finished he would pick his teeth with her delicate, snow white bones. “Oh, what wicked work you women weave,” he whispered aloud. His breath singed her flesh.

“What could you possibly see in her?” Her anger was like a bellows on the fire between them, breathing on it and making it so hot it burned blue. She slipped her knee in between his thighs and exerted a gentle pressure where it was most tender. Her satin gown slid against the tweed of his trousers like water over a rock. 

“I don’t know.” He sighed and attempted to clasp her fragile body against his. Tighter and tighter, he’d burst with his need. “Vanessa, please. I don’t know.” He sought her lips with his, but she resisted.

“No? Then what excuse could you possibly offer for this transgression? Well? What? Tell me!” Her hands turned to fists once more and flew at his chest. He stepped away from her and shook his head. He attempted to regain his senses. 

“Are we to continue this dance forever, Vanessa? It is torture.”

“Yes,” Vanessa sighed. “I believe it is the only choreography we know, the only music we have been given.”

“It grieves us,” Sir Malcolm said. 

“Yes,” Vanessa replied. 

Sir Malcolm straightened his jacket. “I will go and draw you a bath. Then we will find you something to eat.” 

“I suppose that is at least a variation on a theme,” Vanessa offered. Her lips had softened into something like a small smile although the sentiment was sorrowful. She relaxed her hands as they fell, gentle as leaves, against her hips.


	2. Chapter 2

The golden hour turned to dusk, and dusk to night.

Submerged in steaming, fragrant water, and surrounded with candles, Vanessa bathed. He’d ensured the water was nearly scalding, as she liked it. She stretched and wiggled her toes, attempting to warm them completely. He’d scented her tub with a floral blend he preferred, and to which she’d grown accustomed. Strangely, she’d come to associate it’s delicate aroma more with him than with herself though she wore it, dabbed behind her ears and on the insides of her wrists, nearly every day.

He could have bid Sembene prepare her bath, and yet he insisted on doing it himself. Vanessa supposed it could have been a gesture of reconciliation, or even repentance, although neither exertion particularly existed in their limited repertoire. For a time, she mused on it, rolling the almost tender nugget of knowledge around in her mind like a ball of dough- how familiar he was with her ways. And, it could very well be said, she was equally familiar with his. It said _something,_ did it not, when one could practically set one’s clock by the soft swish of a brush in soap followed by the even scratches of a man’s shaving routine. He’d be unaware of her need to note the delicate clink of razor against basin from another room, and yet she strained her ear from her bed for it. It said _something_. But what?

Certainly, he hadn’t predicted the anguish he’d inflicted upon her the morning she woke to relentless silence for hour upon hour, followed by the harpy cry of his elated whistling as he returned home in the late morning to Grandage Place. She’d risen at last to find Evelyn Poole’s green eyes glittering triumphantly at her from her fire. Knowing came upon her like a savage attack she could not beat off.

Vanessa ran her tongue over her teeth and trailed her fingertips over the water. Her throat twitched with longing to create syllables of _Verbis Diablo._ She felt them gurgle in her stomach, long to come up and out in an endless, acrid stream. How it would burn at first, how it would tear at her from the inside to utter those verses, but then would come relief. She knew this. She trusted the process and held confidence in her own abilities.

She bit her tongue to stop herself, even as she imagined conjuring elements, all the forces with which she might rend a human form and destroy a demonic soul. It was so tempting. It would be easy as spilling into the ecstasy of an orgasm, and it would feel equally as rapturous. Holding back from this delicious pleasure was equally as difficult. Painful almost. Her abdomen burned and tensed. She tried to breathe into the ache, tried to loosen the tightness in her jaw. She swirled the water. Perfumed oil coiled in a shimmering serpent on the surface before her eyes. She watched it dance, lulled to a place where she heard a comforting, familiar voice.

“Is this who you are now, Little Scorpion?”

“Who I am? What about her? Does she not deserve it, to be punished? For what she’s done to us?”

“Hrmph,” Joan cleared her throat and snorted in annoyance at Vanessa. Even from beyond the veil, Vanessa could sense Joan’s keen displeasure. “What she’s done to you? Look what she did to me, Child.”

“Yes! And that as well. There is much for which she deserves retribution.” Vanessa exhaled in an angry huff as she remembered the lust-filled, vacant stare Malcolm had offered her the morning he’d returned from Evelyn Poole’s bed. His smile had spread, languid as a stretching cat, over his face. His bliss had stroked a string of anxiety in Vanessa which vibrated at a greater and louder frequency every moment until she recognized it had turned into fear.

“Foolish, willful slut that you are. Always worried about the man.”

“No! That’s not it. Oh why would you understand,” Vanessa sighed and slapped her hand on the water. The snake hissed at her, its forked tongue waving toward her breasts.

“Wouldn’t I? And why not? Because I was old? Because I was not in possession of pert breasts that bob on bathwater like sweet little apples?”

“Go away. You’re no help.”

“And you’re a petulant brat. He got that right anyway,” Joan taunted. “What did he call you? Selfish? Spoiled? He sees you for what you are. Would I could share a drink with him and swap stories. Or would that kindle your jealous ire as well?” Across the room, by her vanity there was a low stool. By candle light, if Vanessa squinted, she could have sworn she saw the hard edge of a pipe being lifted to thin, bitter lips, and smoke drifting amongst her bathwater’s steam.

“Of course not.” Vanessa sighed. Even through the thick mantle of her rage, knowing she disappointed Joan Clayton stung at her heart like a wasp.

“Those words should not tickle your lips. They should not sit easy in your belly, Child. Maybe I’m the fool to not have taught you better.” Sorrow tempered the harshness in Joan’s voice.

“So what should I do?” Vanessa implored. She put a hand on the rim of the tub and leaned forward to better see the specter.

“Ahhhh. Now she wants answers and advice. And a minute ago she bid me leave!”

“Please tell me! I must have an answer!”

“You won’t even feign patience, eh?” The familiar sneer tugged the corners of Vanessa’s lips, even as it triggered a fresh stream of tears from her eyes. “As though anyone has ever been able to tell you what to do, Little Scorpion.” At this her voice was nearly tender.

“I miss you,” Vanessa whispered into the steam. “Please don’t go. I need you,” but as she brought her hand to her nose to wipe the unbidden flow of snot, there was a sudden knock at the door and Vanessa knew it was enough to shatter the fragile connection between the veil and to startle away any spirits who might have joined her in her bath.

Sir Malcolm entered without invitation. “I heard your voice,” he said. “To whom were you talking?”

“No one. Myself. No one.” Vanessa muttered. She looked down at the water to see the snake slithering away. It disappeared beneath the surface. She thought she felt it wrap around her ankle, but when she raised her leg to inspect it, there was nothing there.

“You’ve been crying?”

“No.” She sank under the water and submerged herself in the great, copper tub. She kept her eyes closed and held her breath until she no longer could, and then she let it all out in great bubbles from her nose and mouth. _Beware your own venom, Little Scorpion_ , she heard, whispered amidst the watery noises against the side of the tub.

She emerged, slick and scented. Lilac perfume dripped in her hair.

“You look like a goddess out of Greek mythology. Come to tempt me,” his voice was low. “May I comb your hair?” She nodded at the table upon which her toilette was laid, near the seat where Joan may have just sat. He picked up the ivory backed comb and pulled the stool over to the tub. In long, slow, gentle strokes, he combed out her hair. He plucked at the tangles until her tresses shone like onyx in the candle light.

“Did you do this for her?”

“No. Never.”

“Do you swear it?”

He ground his jaw and remembered kneeling before Evelyn. He remembered her taste, like almond cookies at Christmas and he flushed hot as he turned away from Vanessa. “I swear it. There were other things, but I did not comb her hair in the bath.” His smile, the laughter they shared as they tumbled together, time after time. Even as it happened, he knew it was his most severe transgression against Vanessa; that he had allowed joy with another woman. It had been almost painful, how wonderful it felt, the sweet sugarplum of her lips, the candied ginger nut of her nipples. She had been like a fairy tale cottage made of delicacies upon which he wanted to gorge himself until he was fat enough to roll like a ball across a field. Gladly he would have made himself sick on her and then gone back for more. Thinking of the gorgeous, sugary taste of that woman made his cock twitch, even as he sat there with Vanessa’s comb in his hand.

The water sloshed suddenly as Vanessa turned her body to face him. He looked down at the puddle that formed on the floor, then back up at her. “Bliss does not become you, Malcolm Murray. I will not have it. You are mine in your bitter grief and anger. In darkness we are bound. In despair you are mine.”

He lowered his head and she could not quite tell if it was in suppressed anger or supplication. “You would deny me this, even now?”

“Yes,” Vanessa said. “Even now.”

Her words were a crowbar and pried open the grip Evelyn had on him. No longer did he feel the sparkle of ginger on his tongue, or the grit of sugar in his teeth. He touched Vanessa’s pale, somber face and bent to consume the smoke and brandy of her lips. “So be it,” he whispered against her mouth.

She moaned as she opened her lips and kissed him. Still afloat in the tub, she brought both her hands to his face and clung to him as though she might drown in her own bath were she to let go. He plunged his fist into the water to grab her breast. She arched into his hand. The cuffs of his shirt and jacket became wet, but he didn’t care. He pinched her nipple and rolled it between his fingers. He bit her lip. He sucked her kiss, stroking his tongue upon hers. He dove deeper into the tub to fumble for her silken delta, his shirt and coat now wet up to his elbow. He had to touch her. His cock felt pernicious in his trousers, as though he would tear his seams with craving. He half lifted her from the tub with one hand, and made to open his pants with his other hand.

Here. He’d take her here. He had to have her. She was his after all; his gothic bride of grief, his sable angel of anguish. He’d fuck her to senseless tears that would smear all the ink on the pile of fucking calling cards. He’d bend her over the tub and screw her from behind, like he used to do with the whores in Zanzibar, but she would like it. Vanessa would demand every inch of him, hard and fast because she was his. She was so much his, she was practically him. Yes, she would starve for it all just the same way he wanted it, his constant consort of torment.

In his sudden fever to feel and feast upon her, he remembered she’d not eaten in days. “Are you hungry?” He forced himself to ask in a ragged breath.

“Suddenly ravenous,” Vanessa replied. She let go of his face and stood in the tub. He dredged his waterlogged arm from the bath. It dripped heavily in his lap. From his low seat on the stool, he gazed up at her body, which glimmered in the candlelight. To take her here, over the tub, before she’d even supped, would be most uncouth, but oh it tempted him so he could hardly stand. But stand he did, and he fetched her a cloth with which he wrapped her nubile and shivering form. In the floral steam that rose off her flesh, he thought he caught also a waft of something vaguely reminiscent of spice, the tobacco perhaps of a pipe. But as soon as he thought he smelled it, it was gone, and there was just Vanessa, glowing pink from her boiling waters.

“Let us go then and see what Sembene has put up for tea,” he said. He left Vanessa to dry and dress herself. He’d asked that their meal be set in his rooms. Truth be told, he recognized a gnawing, empty pit in his stomach as well. Perhaps they would both do well with some proper sustenance. His tongue floated over his lower lip and captured the complex flavors of Vanessa’s kiss, a delicacy in its own acquired right and taste.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally finished the last installment of this little fic. Hope you enjoy and please comment! xoxoxo.

They took their supper in his rooms, sitting across from one another at a small table. 

“The bones of these little birds are almost tiny enough to be needles,” Vanessa said idly as she held up a specimen to the light and rolled it between her fingers. 

“Are you feeling better now you’ve eaten?” Sir Malcolm asked her. He refilled both of their glasses with wine. She dropped the delicate bone onto her porcelain plate. It uttered an almost inaudible ‘clink’ as it made contact. 

“Quite,” she sighed and raised her glass to her lips, peering at him as she drank. She sat closest to the fire, her hair spread out over her shoulders so it could dry. 

“Would you like anything else, my dear?”

“Really, Malcolm, it does not become you to be so solicitous.” She smiled at him. “It is not what we are.”

“No,” he growled. She tucked her hair back behind an ear, and as she did so, the bruise he’d left on her shoulder revealed itself. She trailed her fingers over it absently, but all the while regarded him with eyes of hot blue fire. She raised an eyebrow. He pushed his seat back suddenly from the table and stood. As he did, he knocked over his glass of wine and it spilled. The liquid spread over the white table cloth in a furious blush. 

Vanessa smiled. 

Sir Malcolm scowled and bent, grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. He tugged her roughly into his body, holding only her wrist, and forced his mouth upon hers. She opened her lips, arched her neck back, and melted under his kiss so he had no choice but to take her body in his arms lest she fall away from him. He pulled her hair and rubbed his coarse face against the satin of her fresh, clean cheek. 

He brought her arms up to his shoulders and then lifted her up so her legs came around his waist. From up high, she looked down upon his face, stroked his hair and kissed his forehead as he carried her to bed. He pushed her down onto the cushions, hastily undressed himself, then practically ripped apart her robe to reveal her silken flesh. He mashed his body upon her, pinning her arms against the bed and bruising every inch his lips could find with kisses. He shoved her legs apart and rushed into her without a moment to spare, taking her by surprise and by force, intent on satisfying himself as hard and fast as he possibly could. 

Yet for every move of lustful brutality on his part, she met him with tender calm. She licked his ear and whispered things against his neck that he did not bother to hear, but her breath tickled him like a spring breeze all the same. When he let go of her arms, she brought them around his back. Her hands stroked his spine and swirled around the small of his back in the little patch of hair that grew there. 

“You man, you beast,” she hummed and squeezed her inner walls around his cock, slowing his thrusts and forcing him to feel every wet inch of her until he lay so still atop her, he felt nearly paralyzed. He raised his head from her breast, which he had been mauling with hands and mouth and looked into her eyes. “There,” she whispered and put a hand on either side of his face. She raised her head off the pillow to catch his lips in a kiss that was at once gentle and heated. A rumble emanated from the back of his throat as he deepened the kiss, but he did not resume the former harshness. For his compliance, he was rewarded by her bringing her knees up and wrapping them around him, allowing him to slide even deeper inside of her. 

“Yes,” he groaned and began to move within her, slowly finding the places he knew would bring her ecstasy. He brought her to the edge, then tickled her nipple with his tongue and felt her spend in fiery pulsations that seemed to spread throughout his entire body. He so wanted to join her, at that exact moment, to come with his mouth on her breast and his fingers between her teeth, and yet he found for all his desire, he could not. 

They fucked, mad and mirthless, well into the night. 

He fought a bizarre torture of want and hate that burned in him until he thought it would surely kill him. At last, as though possessed, Vanessa pushed him off of her and got onto her hands and knees on the bed. She grinned devilishly back at him, over her shoulder as he positioned himself between her legs, drove himself in to his hilt and allowed himself to ride her with every ounce of vigor left in him. He put a hand on her throat and felt the delicate bumps of her neck, felt how easily it could be to squeeze or snap it, and within a few more thrusts he was feeling the glorious light of his climax spurting out of him in thick, hot jets into her. He pressed his hips against her ass, as close as he could get, sealing himself against her until eventually his cock began to shrink and slip away. 

He wrapped his arms around her waist and collapsed, pulling her with him onto the bed. She snuggled her back into his chest. 

“You are angry I am not her,” Vanessa stated. 

Malcolm exhaled heavily. “How plainly you speak. It is not a pleasing characteristic in the fairer sex to be so blunt.” 

“And yet you are home with me.”

“As if I have a choice,” he said bitterly, but even as the words evacuated his mouth, he stroked her hair and kissed the back of her raven head. 

“Neither of us have ever had a choice,” Vanessa yawned. “If we had, surely we would not have chosen this.” 

“All of my secrets and sins I’ve planted in your skin only for you to nurture with aridity and ice of your hostility and selfishness,” Sir Malcolm said. 

She considered his words in a moment of silence that held a sense of sacred suspense. “You’ve the silver tongue of a poet and the black heart of a demon,” Vanessa said. “Is it any wonder Lucifer chose to bind me eternally with you?”

“With each other,” he corrected her. “With each other we have been bound.” 

“Endless torment,” she sighed. “Do you think we will ever be anything other than puppets to the Dark One?” 

“I do not know, Vanessa,” he said. His voice was very sad, and even more so as he repeated, “I do not know.” His arm grew heavy over her and she could feel his breath slow as he fell into deep sleep. He rolled onto his back. 

Vanessa sat up in his bed and gazed down on him by the light of the dying fire. Eventually, she rose and pulled the covers up around his naked body, wondering how a man could look simultaneously so savage and so susceptible in sleep. He was a creature who could pounce upon her and murder her at any moment- the blossoming bruises on her neck were proof enough of that. But she bent and kissed the center of his chest anyway. It was a risk she was willing to take. 

She snatched her robe and left his rooms. A brief detour was made to her room for her tobacco and rolling papers, prior to mounting the stairs and once again descending to the parlor of Grandage Place. Once there, she poured herself a brandy, took the tray of calling cards and sat before the fire place as she rolled a cigarette. As she smoked, she felt Malcolm’s seed spill out of her and trickle down her thigh in a flow warm as blood. 

It made her smile.

She finished her brandy and picked up the calling cards. Without offering them another glance, she tossed them into the flames. The green eyes, which had been watching her from the fire, closed and disappeared.


End file.
